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Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Remember: the strength program is a progression

I try not to get too political here, but Ben always brings out my inner Libertarian.

We've been doing our strength program for about two and a half months, and I'm seeing many of you make some great progress. Those of you who are taking the progression seriously, tracking your weights, adding weight each day, are the ones seeing the most progress. Some of you are lifting for 3x5 what your old heavy single was - that's awesome!

The goal of this strength program is to make gains as slowly as possible - I want you to spend your effort moving perfectly and only slowly adding weight. For those of you who are new to the program or are getting impatient, I just want to remind you: the first time you see a lift in the program I want you to start somewhere around 50% of your max (if you know your max). If you don't know what your max is, we'll work with you to learn the lift and find a very light weight that you can move with perfect form. Then the next time you see the lift you'll want to only add 5 pounds. It will feel very light - that's the plan. I want you to burn in perfect movement patterns before it gets heavy.

If you're skeptical about this very light start, look that the folks who have been doing this program since we started it last year. Their weights are starting to get to be a serious percentage of their max. They're lifting a significant amount of weight, they're getting strong, but their form is perfect and the lifts look great.

For this to work, you need to keep track of your lifts and be patient. Don't randomly select weights each day, don't jump into going heavy. Start light, lighter than you want to go. By the time it gets heavy you'll have built up a ton of perfect reps. If you need a way to track your weights, we have a solution for that. If you have your own way to track it, that's fine, just know where you are in your progression.